Training

You’ve started a PASW Data Collection Interviewer Web project, loaded up a participant list, launched your survey with sample management, and set up a beautifully formatted HTML email invitation in the Email activity. Now you’re ready to contact your first batch of potential respondents.

Because you will need to send additional batches of email messages, you decide to use the Email option to add a field that will enable you to save the date and time you send an email to a participant list. Everything is going well, until you realize that you don’t have an empty field in which to store that information.

Even when you think you’ve planned for every possible scenario, situations such as this can happen. Unfortunately, most users do not have access to or permission to use SQL Server tools, which would enable them to add the field directly to the SQL Server table containing the participant list. They typically have access only through the Participants activity in PASW Data Collection Interviewer Server Administrator.

The good news is that you can easily add additional fields by creating a single record with the new fields as part of the header row of a new participant list text file. Here’s how:

• Create a file with a header row containing ID and any new fields separated by the appropriate delimiter
• Create one record with an ID that is not part of any sequence you plan to use

Figure 1: A single record with new fields in the header row.

• Load this file through the Participants activity in PASW Data Collection Interviewer Server Administrator

Figure 2: The new fields from the header can be viewed under Additional Fields.

• Go to the View tab of the Participants activity, select the new record, and delete it.

Figure 3: The single record can be selected and deleted using the View tab of the Participants activity.

• When you load the participant file, any fields on the Additional Fields tab that did not already exist in the table will be added to the participant table. After deleting the single record, you will have a table that contains all of your original information as well as your new fields.
• Select the new field InvitationSent as the storage field in the Email activity and start sending your emails

Figure 4: Selecting InvitationSent adds the date and time of the email to the field.

One final thought: If you have already sent emails to survey participants and can identify them with a selection, you can edit the new field to include the date and time the messages were sent.

*PASW Data Collection Interviewer Web, formerly known as mrInterview Web, is part of SPSS Inc.’s Predictive Analytics Software portfolio.